My Monday evening class, “Women, Mary and Jesus,” just started and I have to admit it may have been the best first class session I’ve ever had. To set the whole class into context, we focused last night on discussions about “masculinity and femininity” — asking students to discuss what they are hearing and thinking about such issues — which I followed with a brief description of strong patriarchy, soft patriarchy, evangelical egalitarianism and humanist egalitarianism. We broke for 15 minutes or so, but two groups remained to continue the discussion of masculinity and femininity (gotta love that). Then we had our first exposure to the redemptive movement hermeneutic of William Webb, Slaves, Women and Homosexuals. It may be that this class is best taught in a block schedule arrangement (which I’m doing this semester) … really looking forward to working with this group of students.